It is then that Hartley is initially subtly and then a bit more forcefully questioned about the young woman who lives upstairs from him in the penthouse, Alice Poole.

Since this is a Peter Robinson novel, readers should also be aware of the prerequisite plot twists that may veer this story into unpredictable directions. Burgess says his current work is “nothing very interesting,” but it dovetails with inquiries Banks is trying to pursue. As long as Robinson continues to plague Banks with seemingly unsolvable cases, I'll keep reading him. His ex-girlfriend, Alice Poole, has been found murdered, and her new boyfriend Mark Woodcroft is missing.Armed with this knowledge, Banks senses there may be a connection between the moribund inquiry into Alice Poole’s death, and the body found in Gillespie’s field.

There was an uncharacteristic listlessness and occasional bad taste and this was not unfortunately a good good ye. English law demands that archeologists be given first crack at ground that is designated for commercial use.

This is just one of the investigations running as the death of a young woman is bundled into the work load. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Peter grew up in Yorkshire, and divided his time between Richmond, UK, and Canada until his death in 2022. Through painstaking detective work, they eventually link the body to scandals involving undercover policing during a period of political turmoil in England more than 30 years earlier that are only now (in 2019) coming to light.

For the uninitiated, this is a great place to start and I envy your journey in reading the entire back catalogue of novels in what is still one of the best series in the genre. Robinson’s artistry lies in his dexterous placement of clues, whispered secrets lying dormant or boldly paraded in plain sight. Smart and dogged police work, mostly by DC Gerry Masterson and DS Winsome Jackman, along with forensic services, reveal a bit more from the few intriguing fragments found with the remains, which along with trawling through missing persons reports gives the team a number of leads to follow, leads which eventually propel them towards Nick’s investigation and an old mystery nobody wants unearthed.It drags a lot,the dual timelines contribute nothing and what starts as a puzzle turns into unbelievable scenarios. The second part of the story of the past starts with Nicholas Hartley living in a student housing at college. We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006). Robinson, who died last October, zigzags deftly back and forth between present and past en route to an anticlimactic solution and a truly devastating last sentence.